In some countries and time periods, there are specific naming conventions that determine namesakes: the first son named after the paternal grandfather, the second son after the maternal grandfather, the first daughter after the maternal grandmother, the second daughter after the paternal grandmother, etc.1 At other times, the process of selecting namesakes was less structured. Today I’m taking a look at Dad’s family to identify all the namesakes I can find there.
Grandpa Montgomery‘s name itself is something of a mystery, as I’ve covered here before. That’s the confusion over his middle name. It only just occurred to that his first name (Lawrence) may have been a tribute to his mother, Laura. Grandpa had a second cousin named Lawrence Extol Montgomery who was six years his senior, but that seems less likely to be a real namesake situation.
Grandpa and his first wife, Antonia Marie Jelinek, had two daughters, Flo and Irene. Aunt Flo (Florence Marie), shared her mother’s middle name. I’m not immediately aware of anyone named Florence, Dorothy, or Irene in the family. After Grandpa’s first wife died, he married Grandma (Blanche Agnes Wilson), and they went on to have 10 children together. Grandma’s middle name, Agnes, is an anglicization of the name of her grandmother, Agnette, and in fact, Grandma’s baptismal record lists her as “Agneta Blanche.”2
The eldest child born to Grandma and Grandpa was Myrtle Charlotte. These are both family names (or variations thereof). Grandpa’s eldest sister was named Myrtle Pearl Montgomery, and his father, Charles William Montgomery, was the inspiration for Aunt Myrtle’s middle name. In later years she chose to go by Charlotte instead of Myrtle, and I remember her saying she wished her two names had been reversed.
After Myrtle came the oldest son, Morris Walter. I don’t know of any ancestral Morrises, though “our” Morris had a first cousin, Morris Frenier, who was five years his junior. Walter, though, was the name of Grandpa’s oldest brother, Walter Dewey Montgomery. After Morris came Marvin Lawrence. Similarly to Morris, I’m not aware of any namesake connections for Marvin’s first name, but Lawrence is obviously a callback to Grandpa’s first name. The third son in a row was William Clarence. Uncle Bill, unlike Morris and Marvin, had namesakes for both his names. Grandpa’s father, Charles William, we have of course already mentioned, and he, presumably, was named after his own grandfather, William Montgomery. And Grandma Montgomery had two Clarences in her immediate family: her older brother Anders Clarence died when he was two years old, and then eight years later another son born to the family was named Clarence Salmer.
The next daughter born to the family was Deanna Esther. Though Aunt Deanna had a first cousin once removed named Esther Myrtle Montgomery, I suspect that was just a coincidence, and I’m not aware of any other Esther connections in the family. Family lore (or at least the story Dad heard) was that Deanna was named not after a relative but after singer and actress Deanna Durbin. Deanna Durbin was only seventeen years old in 1939 when our Deanna was born, but her career had begun in a 1936 short with Judy Garland, so the timing is not out of the question.3
After Deanna came two more boys, Alwin Eugene and Theodore Richard. I haven’t been able to find any namesakes in our family tree for Uncle Gene or for Ted’s (aka Dad) middle name, Richard. The “Theodore,” however, shows up a couple of times. First, of course, as Grandpa’s maybe-middle-name, and then with Grandpa’s uncle, Joseph Theodore Montgomery.
Next after Dad came Gloria Blanche, who died at age five. This is another case in which the first name appears to have no precedent, but the middle name has clear family connections, with Gloria being given her middle name in honor of Grandma. After Gloria came Linda Lea; as with Uncle Gene, I’m not aware of any family links to either of Aunt Linda’s names, though when Dad started dating, and then married, Mom, also a Linda, the two Lindas became accidental namesakes, differentiated sometimes in conversation as “Linda Lea” and “Linda Jo.” Last in the family came Aunt Laura, and with her names (Laura Christine) she made up for Aunt Linda’s lack of family names, as she was named after both of her grandmothers, Laura Maud Walker and Sophie Christine Roberg.
Twelve children later, and we’ve reached the end of this look into one collection of family names and namesakes. Of course there are many more namesakes on both sides of the family tree, as well as other reasons for selecting names that don’t have anything to do with family history…at least not until the stories get told or written for posterity.
